


Unit Cohesion

by Sroloc_Elbisivni



Series: wistfully chains us to fictive ideals [1]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Caboose Siblings, Donut Siblings, Gen, Project Freelancer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-09-03
Packaged: 2018-05-23 14:59:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6120097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sroloc_Elbisivni/pseuds/Sroloc_Elbisivni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Allison lives. Allison becomes the military liaison to Project Freelancer. What follows is a better version of history.<br/>(aka: Beta is never created, Alpha isn't split into fragments, and everyone argues a lot)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This AU was inspired by a [ this post](http://sroloc--elbisivni.tumblr.com/post/134959325069/tuckerfuckingdidit-epsilongrif-au-where-tex) on tumblr. The rest of it I blame on Steph.

Dr. Leonard Church has been waiting _years_ to get clearance for this project. When the email finally comes, he reads it over once, twice, three times, and then leans back in his chair to allow himself the luxury of a satisfied sigh.

Finally.

As he expected, they want to appoint a liaison for the military, but everything else is according to plan—including, most crucially, permission for an AI. The liaison can simply be distracted with some runaround paperwork while everything else moves forward right on schedule. The soldiers have already been chosen, their applications waiting in a pile for review and sign-off. The facilities have been constructed, and are now only awaiting final inspections.

Everything is proceeding according to plan.

The liaison is set to arrive tomorrow, so when he hears a knock on the door, he assumes it to be Counselor Price and calls out, “Come in!”

The door opens and the person there is most definitely not Aidan Price.

“Lieutenant General Church, military liaison for Project Freelancer, reporting for duty.” And as always, her salute and stance are picture perfect, but as always around him, one corner of her mouth is quirked up. “Hello, Leonard. I look forward to working with you.”

Leonard Church reminds himself that thumping his forehead against the desk would not only be unprofessional, but a sign of surrender, and that neither is opportune at this moment.

Allison, meanwhile, has seated herself at the edge of the desk and begun chatting with FILSS.

He can feel a headache forming. He has a feeling it will most definitely not be the last.

 

* * *

 

Three days later, they’ve hashed out the details of the facilities and are starting to look through the candidate applications. That’s when things go about as difficult as he was expecting them to get.

“Carolina applied for this, didn’t she?” asked Allison.

“I don’t know, I’ve read so many of these applications, I really—”

“Leonard.” She places the file down with deceptively telling patience. “Sargent Carolina Church is one of the most capable, accomplished soldiers in the UNSC armed forces. Why isn’t her application in the group of final ones, especially since the rest of them are at or below her level?”

He avoids her gaze.

 Allison sighs. “Leonard, I think we should come back to these tomorrow. At that point, if I still don’t see her application on the stack, I’m going to go looking for it. And I’ll start by asking her.” She raises one eyebrow significantly, waits a minute to make sure he got the message, and then stands up and leaves.

Leonard waits for three whole minutes, staring straight ahead, before opening the bottom drawer in his desk and pulling out a file.

Allison wasn’t wrong; Carolina is by far one of the most qualified agents for the program.

His tablet chimes with a personal message—from Allison.

_{You can’t protect her forever, Leonard.}_

He sighs, rubs one hand across his forehead, and tosses the application onto the pile with the rest.

 

* * *

 

The next major fight comes when she stumbles onto the personnel files, including his plans. He knows he’s in trouble when he comes back from getting coffee to find her with her arms crossed and an utterly calm expression on her face.

“Leonard,” she says, and oh, with that tone of voice, he _knows_ he’s in trouble. “Would you mind explaining _why_ , exactly, you have plans specifically to generate friction between two potential agents when their service records both indicate that both of them work best _together?”_

Leonard places the two cups down carefully. “We only have clearance for one AI, Allison. We have no way to make more. AIs can’t be repeatedly copied. There are theories of fragmenting, but the results are likely to be unstable at best, self-destructive at worse. In the end, we will need _one_ soldier.”

“Like hell.”

“Alli—”

“No. UNIT COHESION, Leonard. I don’t know if that’s too much of a lowbrow military term for you to understand, but the AI isn’t as important to the program as a team of highly trained, specially equipped soldiers, specifically conditioned to work together. That’s the goal here, not teaching them to tear each other down. What do you think that will lead to in the middle of a battle?”

“An AI, designed to run specialized equipment implanted in armor—that could revolutionize warfare.”

“And when the other side gets ahold of it—and they _will,_ because that’s how war _works,_ Leonard—then what? Then we’ve got two superpowered titans facing off on the battlefield? More? Then what?” She waves her hands in the air. “I know you’re all about bringing modern science into warfare, Leonard, but you need to believe me when I tell you that sometimes the tried and true ways are the best. You can buy, and build, and invent everything but the sun, but at the end of the day, so can anyone else. This isn’t like chess, Leonard. You can’t push pieces around from the edge of the board, can’t hinge your entire strategy around your queen. You can equip them, lay the board, line them up, but once you hit a certain point, they need to work together. They need to handle themselves. That’s what you need to do—help them become a team, so they can work together with this AI. Not set them up to tear each other apart.”

“Allison—”

“Which one of us has been on a battlefield, Leonard? I’ve seen it—a team defeats a lone soldier, every. Single. Time. A team can get the major targets, can get things done. A team can get you home safe after what was supposed to have been a fatal shot.”

That stops him dead in his tracks.

Allison doesn’t waver. “I know how war works, Leonard. I know how battlefields work—how soldiers work—and I know that what you’re planning out here will break them apart faster than anything else. You need to trust me on this.”

Leonard knows she’s right, damn it all to hell.

He’s been in debates with planet leaders, the best minds of his age, and his five year old daughter when she didn’t want to take a nap, but Allison is the only person he’s ever met who can out-argue him every time.

“Do you know how long it took me to plan all this out on the first place? We’ll be lucky to have a basic outline done by the time they report for preliminary training.”

Allison’s smile is still the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. “Well. Two heads are better than one, after all.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: New recruits. Old recruits. A revival of an initially vetoed idea. Arguing.

A year and a half after Allison and Leonard have shaken hands over the final arrangements of Project Freelancer, the program is chugging steadily along and the final batch of potential new recruits has arrived on base. Allison, as a rule, does not oversee the initial testing aside from looming impressively in the back of the room and letting her uniform speak for her. None of the cadets have ever met her one on one, however, and she knows from experience that all they see when they get a glimpse of her is the insignia and the badges and the cap and not the face.

So this ought to work out perfectly.

She glances into the training room while wrapping the final strips of exercise tape around her knuckles.

A whole row of new soldiers, bright-eyed and shiny-faced.

Well, relatively speaking.

She flexes her hands and lets a wicked smile creep onto her face.

This is going to be _fun_.

 

* * *

 

"Psst."

"Shut up, David."

"But Conniiiiieeee..."

"Shut UP, David."

"Oh, c'mon. Aren't you bored?"

"We're standing in the middle of a training room on one of the most high-tech facilities ever built on our last day of qualification testing for a top-secret military program, waiting for some kind of unspecified final session, and you have the audacity to be BORED?"

"SHHHHHH!" 

The soon-to-be Connecticut, but for now still Cornelia, turns bright red and looks straight ahead after being shushed by half the row at once.

"Well, I'm not now," whispers David.

She really is going to kill him.

"Alright!" a voice calls out, and a tall blonde woman with some seriously intimidating muscles strides onto the floor. "Who's up first?" She scans the line and points directly at David. "How about you?"

Correction: Connie is going to sit back and watch while this lady kills him. And possibly laugh.

 

* * *

 

David Washington is young, definitely, but he knows he’s the best soldier in his unit. His hand-to-hand skills aren’t at the same level as his 99th-percentile range ones, but they aren’t too shabby, either. He'd taken down every guy in his old unit at least twice in the ring before getting shipped here, and he and Connie are pretty evenly matched if she doesn’t use her knives.

It takes thirty seconds for the mysterious combat lady to put him groaning on the floor.

She stands over him and nods. “Don’t let your opponent get too much reach on you. Who’s next?”

David just groans up at her before getting out of the way.

 

* * *

 

Allison takes on the recruits one by one. A few truly skilled hand to hand fighters, some that show promise, most…well. She’s sure that they were a credit to their squads.

She’s managed to eliminate most of the group over the past week already—this is just a final check to confirm her suspicions more than anything.

The first kid, what’s-his-face, needs to work on something besides his firearm skill for once, but he’s a perfect fit for the program personality-wise. Friendly since day one, approachable and trying to approach the other candidates, treated FILSS like a person since their introduction, and since getting back up after her takedown he’s been watching attentively as she takes down the rest.

He’ll fit in fine, and so will the girl he’s been whispering to. She needs to relax a bit, and practice fighting without her weapons, but she’s maintained cordial relations with the other recruits, has no obvious authority issues, and has never talked down to FILSS or treated her as unfeeling.

The other potential recruit is tall, whipcord-lean man with a habit of cracking annoying knock-knock jokes, but he’s got a knack for defusing tension—or at least redirecting it at himself—and has talked to FILSS as he would to anyone else.

The rest have either been abrasive, dismissive of FILSS, gossipy, spoiling for a fight, or otherwise useless.

Allison works her way through the group, giving everyone at least a minimum of feedback (if she isn’t honest with them, they won’t improve, and that won’t do anyone any good) as she goes. In the end, she finds herself totally unsurprised by the actions of any of them, which at least makes her final decision much easier.

Reconsidering after a personal inspection makes everything awkward, because then she has to go back and question her old decisions and review records with Leonard and in general put a lot of effort into checking and end up crankily going with her first impulse anyway.

Of course, the one time she decided in favor of her reconsideration ended with the recruitment of Agent Maine, which she doesn’t really regret. He might be taciturn, but he definitely knows how to fight, and he has no problems defending other people as well.

Eventually, she’s put all of them on the floor at least once (the kid she’s got her eye on and took down first asked if he could go again—she _definitely_ likes him) and her bad shoulder is starting to complain, so it’s time to bring this to a close.

“You’ll all receive your final evaluations by the end of today. Thank you all for your efforts this past week,” she announces. Salutes in response aren’t guaranteed since she’s not in uniform, so she settles for standing by the door and looking official as they leave.

The woman she’s had her eye on, Sergeant Hartford, is the last one to leave, and on her way out she asks, “What _was_ this, really? Sir?”

“A final evaluation of your unarmed hand-to-hand combat skills, soldier,” Allison says with a perfectly straight face honed by a military career and brought to perfection by two years of meetings theoretically to discuss budget proposals. In actuality, the meetings consisted of Leonard trying very hard to be civil while explaining AI theory and capabilities for the umpteenth time while Allison loomed in the background and conveyed a sense of Importance.

If anyone was dumb or uninformed enough to still play poker with her by now, Allison and her face could make enough money to fund this damned program herself.

“Evaluations don’t usually come with immediate feedback, sir.” Hartford blinks and Allison can see the wheels turning behind the sergeant’s eyes as they flick over her posture, her haircut, and the muscles on her arms, this time with an entirely new perspective. The younger woman grins, salutes, and leaves.

Allison waits until she knows the people taking bets in the observation room will have cleared out, and then she lets herself have a nice, long chuckle.

Oh, she _likes_ this batch. The real question, of course, is whether or not they’ll make it through their first time in the cafeteria with the rest of the agents.

 

* * *

 

Allison is in her quarters that evening when FILSS announces, “There is an urgent message for you, General.”

“Is the room secure?”

“Of course, General.”

“Play message.”

FILSS is silent for a moment before playing Leonard’s voice. “Allison, Agent Georgia has been found and retrieved. He’s in the care of the UNSC on an outlying space station. His injuries are neither life-threatening nor disabling, but they are sufficiently debilitating that he will never again be able to function at the capacity required for the program. I was hoping to speak with you regarding options as soon as possible.” The voice switched back to FILSS’s. “End message. Would you like to hear the message again?”

“No. In fact, FILSS, please record my reply.”

“Certainly. Recording now.”

“Leonard: fuck that. I’m getting the coordinates from FILSS and going to talk to Georgia myself. I’ll get a ride from one of the program pilots. Oh, and I submitted the forms for the last round of candidates, no reconsiderations. End message, but delay delivery for half an hour. FILSS, what pilots are currently on-duty?”

 

* * *

 

Five hours later, after brief attempts to hold a conversation with the junior pilot unlucky enough to pull a gamma shift and with enough self-preservation not to question why one of the heads of the program wanted a ride to a space station miles away from anything without any prior warning, Allison watches the ship exit slip space in front of a fairly small space station.

She took enough time to clean up and pull on her uniform before departing, so it’s fairly easy to get access to the station. The medbay proves more challenging, but she swears up and down to the intimidating nurse that she only wants five minutes, and Georgia’s yells when he realizes she’s there make it pretty evident that not letting her in isn’t going to help.

“Hello, you old bastard. Glad to see you made it,” Allison says to him as she pulls up a chair. She’s always liked Georgia. Or, well, not Georgia now.

“Evening, sir. Now tell me you didn’t haul yourself all the way away from the Mother of Invention just for little ol’ me?” The man’s Southern drawl is confident despite its scratchiness, but his good hand shakes as he raises it to salute.

“Cut that out, soldier. You’re not under my command anymore.” She knows he has to have realized that by now, and dancing around won’t get them anywhere quick.

The grin (also shaking, and the sight of it hurts) drops off his face so fast it looks like it was wiped away. “So that’s how it is.”

Allison pulls up his chart and starts to flip through it. “You were thrown through space by an off-course jet pack for three days before _smacking into a space station._ You’ve got five cracked ribs, two more outright broken, one fractured arm, one broken leg, a severe case of oxygen deprivation from spending three days in your armor in space, muscle spasms, and a whole bunch of other medical jabber I can’t read but I know isn’t anything good. And that’s without the MIA-KIA paperwork we still haven’t finished sorting out. We can’t take you back as an agent, Hartman.” She doesn’t bother apologizing for the truth. He wouldn’t want it, anyways.

He watches her, eyes canny. “Not as an agent?”

Allison thinks of one of the supplements to the program Leonard had devised that she had vetoed, the spin on it that she had been starting to consider, and the odds that she could get him to reinstate it without a massive hissy fit. “There might— _might—_ be another option. Something we’ve been considering adding to the program. You still wouldn’t qualify as an agent, but—”

“But I’d still be doing my job helping you fight this damn war!” He realizes he’s interrupted his superior officer before she can even raise a disapproving eyebrow. “Uh, sir.”

“You would.” Allison stands up and salutes him. “Get some rest, soldier. Heal up, don’t skimp on the physical therapy. That’s an order.”

“Yes, sir.” He salutes again, and she thinks there’s less shake in his fingers this time.

“I’ll let you know more about the program. And that, by the way, is a promise.” With that, she leaves.

 

* * *

 

Later, after she and Leonard have had a nice long shouting match about “misuse of resources” and “not abandoning our agents, dammit,” she digs up the file on her idea from the folder of abandoned concepts that accumulated during their six-month planning session. She spends a few nights tweaking it over before presenting it to Leonard.

“The simulation troopers?” He looks it over, considering. “I thought you disapproved.”

Allison shrugs. “The idea itself had some merit, and now that I’ve seen the group we’ve got, I think it still might be able to work. Downscaled a bit, though. Fewer schemes and manipulations—it would just be sending in the agents and letting a scenario develop from there. And only one outpost.”

“On…Blood Gulch, I see.”

“Ass-end of the galaxy, plenty of canyons it would be easy enough to set up bases in, only Elite influence some ancient ruins. Took the liberty of earmarking a few candidates, even this early in advance.”

He flips through the digital materials, stopping at a name she knew would catch his eye. “Sarge Hartman? Agent Georgia?”

“ _Former_ Agent Georgia, as you’ve informed me. He knows enough about the program and the other agents that he’s an asset with us and a risk to everyone else. Besides, having him in the regular army at this point would just be cruel.”

“I’m sure he could handle it.”

“I meant cruel to the army.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: Alpha is born. Alpha drives everyone nuts. The Church family interacts and drives the author nuts trying to extrapolate characterization. The Freelancers interact and drive each other nuts.

In the interest of professionalism, and not humiliating their daughter too much with the vicious screaming matches that have been known to happen when they cohabitate in too small a space, Allison and Leonard have separate quarters on the Mother of Invention.

Still, Allison makes a habit of checking at varying intervals how long it’s been since her husband has been by his own quarters. If it’s been longer than thirty-six hours, she’ll track him down and haul him back and have FILSS lock him in until he’s slept and showered and generally remembered that he’s human and not just an extension of his code.

A few months after Agent Georgia’s recovery, Allison is doing some paperwork to get the sim-trooper base up and running when FILSS announces “General, the Director is looking for you.”

“Did he forget where my rooms are?” she asks, absently trying to decide whether filling out paperwork for a tank would be worth it. “Also, FILSS, do you want a tank?”

“You told me to deny him access to your rooms after the last incident, General, the particulars of which I don’t remember, since you ordered me never to speak of it again.” There’s a thoughtful pause. “General, would a tank improve my efficiency?”

“Who knows? I just figured I might ask you, since you’d be the one running it. Where’s Leonard?” Allison stands up and cracks her neck.

“The Director is outside your door. He has not slept in twenty-seven hours, and his coffee consumption has increased by approximately 5.3% in the past twelve, indicating a major breakthrough in his work. Do you want me to answer your tank inquiry immediately, General?”

“Nah, it can wait. Just remember that people respect a woman a lot more if she’s got a big gun.”

“I believe that my full command of this facility, including its weaponry, electricity, and hot water supplies, give me sufficient respect already, General.”

“Hah!”

The door slides open to reveal Leonard looking jittery, sleepless, more than a bit manic, and as excited as she’s seen him in some time. “Leonard? What is it?”

“I have something to show you. Follow me.”

 

* * *

 

Allison didn’t really know what she expected the AI to look like. If she’s honest, she didn’t expect him to look like much at all. FILSS is the most experience she’s had with a “finished” AI—that is, those that weren’t Leonard’s experimental bits that she had to ban from the rest of the house because they always started shrieking if she ate or drank or did anything they considered dangerous.

She probably wouldn’t have minded so much if the list hadn’t included coffee, anything with gluten, any cooking involving fire or knives, or any interactions with Carolina.

Either way, she had understood that Leonard’s new AI was going to be different from FILSS—FILSS was entirely computer generated, and hadn’t been modeled on any specific human brain. Leonard had drawn on basic brain activity to create her, but no one person’s in particular.

So when Allison sees a projection of a small blue-armored figure, she asks, “Who’s this?”

“This,” Leonard says, voice shaking with pride, “is _Alpha_.”

“Hey, I can talk for myself, y’know!” The figure vanishes, and pops up closer, projecting itself closer to Leonard’s face. “Quit being such a douche.”

Allison feels a grin stretch across her face. “Yes, Leonard. Quit being such a douche.”

“ _You_ stay out of this!” He glares ineffectually at her, before turning to Alpha. “And where did _you_ even _learn_ the word ‘douche’?”

“How am I supposed to know? Do you remember where you learned it?” Alpha poofs out and then pops up in front of Allison’s face. “And who are you?”

“I’m Allison.” She smiles at him. “It’s very nice to meet you, Alpha.”

“Oh.” The little holographic construct ducks his head and shuffles his feet, reminding her a lot of Leonard on their first meeting. Only without the black eye. “Uh. Hi.”

“She’s the military liaison for this project,” Leonard interjects.

“Well, I’m sure I’d _know_ that if you’d let me access the records.”

“You haven’t let him access the records?”

“I—Allison, we just got him online two days ago and finalized today, you can hardly expect—”

“Has he even met FILSS yet?”

“I am still _right here_!”

In the silence following Alpha’s outburst as they all tried to figure out what to say, Alison catches a mutter from the techs at the back of the room. “Oh god, now there’s three of them.”

* * *

 

They work out an arrangement with Alpha where he can go through the records as much as he want, and has free access to the system. He’s allowed to observe the candidates, but not to interact with them yet. And Allison is pretty sure they only got that caveat by posing it as a challenge to not get caught. .

FILSS gets along well with Alpha, letting him piggyback in her systems to check the cameras and the training room without actually giving him control.

Although Allison knows for a fact that they only got _that_ because she asked very nicely.

Leonard corrals and distracts Alpha most of the time with mathematical puzzles and crosswords (she asked once; the AI could blast through just about any number puzzle, but could be tripped up over syntax and puns and cultural context just like any other human). When even those distractions have been run through, Alpha keeps an eye on the soldiers supposed to be in his squad.

He comes up to her sometimes, to ask her why she chose to assign a particular exercise, or a disciplinary method, or even why some of the soldiers do the things they do. She treats him like she did the last SIC she had who asked questions—answers just enough to let him figure out the rest for himself.

It keeps him occupied as long as any other puzzle.

They get eight whole months of routine before Alpha realizes that he can extend ‘observe’ the candidates into ‘spy on them in their quarters’ and from there it all just kind of snowballs.

 

* * *

 

Carolina catches sight of the little white light first, lurking around her quarters. At first, it’s just little flashes out of the corners of her eyes, tiny things she usually spots right after she takes off her helmet or right when she gets back after training.

It’s driving her nuts, making her flinch at odd times. Connie—as she’d asked to be called—sees her twitch in the cafeteria after light flares off a shiny surface.

“You okay?” she asks, raising an eyebrow as she picks at the food.

“Yeah, fine.” Carolina breathes out slowly and rubs her forehead. “I just keep seeing these little flashes out of nowhere and it’s driving me nuts.”

There’s a suspicious silence from the other side of the table.

“This is the point where you’re supposed to say, “You’re not nuts, Carolina, don’t be ridiculous.”

“Eh, I’ve seen you challenge Maine to a sparring match of your own free will. I’m reserving judgment. But I can tell you that you aren’t seeing things no one else is.”

“You too?”

“And Davie.”

“Told you not to call me that.” David plunks down his tray and takes a seat next to Connie. “And I what?”

They compare notes, with the others as they start to trickle in too, and almost all of them have seen weird flickers at one point or another. York’s theory is that there’s something in the water (which is _always_ York’s theory). Maine asks, quietly, “FILSS?”

“No-oo, FILSS doesn’t really have a physical presence,” Carolina replies, considering. “The Director might have altered her programming, but…she’d be more direct than this. I think.”

“No, it’s not FILSS. I asked her after the first time I spotted the light. She said it wasn’t her, but didn’t have anything else to say. No visuals in our quarters anyways.” North offers up his contribution with his usual thoughtfulness. “I think it’s classified. She didn’t outright deny it, but she did that thing where…” He waves his hand in a ‘you know’ fashion and they all nod.

Conversation soon shifts to the upcoming weekend leave—the first one in weeks. The _Invention_ will be setting down on a planet for repairs and check-overs, and the General had told them that they were free to go wherever as long as they were back by the end of four days without causing her any extra paperwork.

That part of the weekly briefing had been punctuated by an icy look that sent shivers down most spines. Carolina knew that the way she could keep her cool under that kind of look got a good chunk of respect. She didn’t know whether she’d get more or less if they knew the reason she was good with it was because she’d been on the receiving end of it for any number of escapades over the years, all the way from cookie theft to sneaking out to parties to enlisting.

The fight that had followed that announcement was worse than any glare in a briefing could be.

“Yo, Carolina!”

And while she’s been zoned out, York dropped into the seat across from her, grin on his face. “So. You and me, first night of leave, wildest party we can find. Yes?”

“No,” she responds, collecting her tray.

“Awwwww, ‘lina. Don’t leave me hanging!” He pops up and follows her to the dumping point.

“I know this may come as a surprise to you, York, but my life doesn’t revolve around you. I’ve got other plans.” She plunks her tray into the hatch and gives York a knife-slash smile with far too many teeth. “I’m free Saturday, though.”

She walks away before his open mouth turns into a grin, but she can hear his hissed “ _Yes!”_ from halfway down the hall.

 

* * *

 

Carolina hadn’t been lying to York about having other plans. Come Friday night, the day they set down on-planet, she makes her way through the ship to the officer’s quarters, located away from the troop bunks.

As Director of the program, Leonard Church has access to a small suite, complete with little kitchen. Most of the lights are out—only the ones in the kitchen are on, so the people cooking can see what they’re doing. Carolina can smell the familiar scents of garlic, tomato sauce, and rosemary from the entrance—and no smoke, thank goodness.

The table’s clear, with two candles set at either end of a white cloth covering two lumps. Allison is busy fiddling with the cloth, but she looks up and smiles when the door opened.

“Oh, good. We’re just about ready to start. _Leonard!”_

“In a _moment!”_

Allison rolls her eyes. “Anyways, I finished _my_ paperwork, Leonard’s not allowed to do any of what he has left until tomorrow, and you’re on leave. So there is now a ban on talking about the project for the rest of the evening.”

It sounds easy, but after they sing and Leonard says the blessing over the candles, Carolina finds herself struggling for a topic. From the way both of her parents are paying close attention to their food, it’s obvious they’re having a similar problem.

“Well, this clearly isn’t working.” Allison bites a meatball in half. “So the brains in R&D whipped up a set of foam paint that also acts as a kind of quick-drying cement. I’ve been thinking of introducing it in training exercises to up the ante a little. Thoughts?”

The conversation flows more easily from there.

Carolina sometimes wonders about what might have happened if she hadn’t enlisted. Would it be easier for them to have conversations that weren’t falling back on the roles of commanding officer and subordinate? Or would they not be talking at all?

She’d like it to be the first; she has a hunch it would be the second. Still, they manage fine enough, and it’s different than on-duty conversations. More warmth, less protocol, but she doubts anybody without her kind of experience would know the difference.

Security clearance is also sometimes politely ignored during family time, if the information is deemed harmless enough, so after they’ve gotten to the wine, she feels relaxed enough to bring up the topic that came up in the mess hall.

“You haven’t been adding any features to FILSS, have you?” She directs the question at her father.

“No, not recently.” He tips his head to the side, considering. “Nothing noticeable anyway—I have been converting parts of the code to make some things more manageable. Why do you ask?”

“Oh,” Carolina waves a hand. “A lot of the other agents have been spotting a weird light around our quarters recently. Prevailing theory is some sort of hologram from a computer-generated intelligence, though we couldn’t figure out why it would be pulling a peeping tom routine.”

Allison promptly chokes on her swallow of wine.

 

* * *

 

It turns out that whatever this is happens to be one of the things that is definitely, positively, absolutely outside her security clearance. Still, now she knows for sure that it’s part of the project, and it’s no stranger than some of the other things that have happened, so she accepts it and moves on with her life. She does keep in mind the conversation she caught a bit of right after she said goodnight.

“A _peeping tom_ , Leonard? I never knew you had it in you—”

“A certain amount of curiosity—”

And that had been when the door slid closed and cut off the rest of the sentence.

Well then.

 

* * *

 

It takes only another week and an experimental Faraday cage that she may or may not have broken into the R&D department to steal before Carolina finally gets a good look at the little white light.

Or, more accurately, an experimental Faraday cage that can completely isolate her personal computer from not only the mainframe but the wireless signal that runs everywhere in the base. More permanent versions are installed on the most top-secret computers to make them invisible to VIs. She figures if it works on FILSS, it should work on this thing that she assumes is FILSS’s younger, more evolved sister.

Knowing her father’s sense of design, she’s expecting something simple. Stylized, maybe—a masklike face?

Carolina is not expecting a tiny holographic figure in the same kind of armor she wears and speaking in her dad’s voice.

“Why the fuck am I _stuck?_ ”

“Why were you in my _room?_ ”

“Geez, it’s not like _that_ , I just wanted to take a look around.”

They don’t get more than two minutes into what’s shaping up to be a really good argument before Allison comes knocking.

Embarrassingly, it takes them a couple minutes more of yelling back and forth before they realize the general’s there, and that’s only because she clears her throat exaggeratedly.

Carolina turns around, face burning, but the little hologram dude just keeps snarking.

“Oh, and what do you want?”

“Well, mostly to get my twenty bucks from Leonard. But also to pull you out of here before the rest of the agents come knocking and we all get yelled for screwing up the almighty director’s precious grand scheme.” She peered at the mess of wires on Carolina’s desk. “R&D know you swiped this?”

“No one’s yelled at me yet. What’s going on here?”

“Hey. Excuse me. Still in the room here.”

“Yeah, I got that.” Allison finds the switch but doesn’t press it just yet. “I just want to make sure you two make nice before I let you go. Carolina, meet Alpha. Alpha, you have now been properly introduced to your future squad leader. Play nice, you two.”

“Wait, how come she gets to be leader?”

“She outranks you. Go on, get outta here.” She turns off the device, but Alpha doesn’t go back into the network.

“No, I mean it, how come—”

“Alpha. Scram.”

He vanishes.

Allison sighs. “Well, this isn’t how you two were really supposed to meet, but I guess it all worked out for the best.”

When she doesn’t get a response, the general looks over and sees her daughter staring at her, shocked. “I…squad leader?”

“Paperwork went through yesterday. You may not have the highest rank, but that’s more a matter of years in service than anything else, you’ve got the most experience with AI out of anyone else in the program. On top of that, you’re competent, capable, and you’ve passed all the qualifications with flying colors and at the top of the group. This has nothing to do with who your folks are, other than it gave you a bit of a leg up in some areas of training. We didn’t even make the final decision.”

“I don’t…” Carolina shakes her head, and salutes. “Thank you, sir.”

“Don’t thank me yet. Report to R&D tomorrow, and come ready to take notes. There’s about five years worth of AI theory you need to get crammed into your head.” But she turns around and salutes back anyways. “Congratulations. Allow me to pass on the words of wisdom I heard when I got my first command.”

“Sir?”

“Don’t fuck it up.” She smiles a knife-slash grin at Carolina and walks out into the hall.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some things are constant across universes. Reds and Blues, assemble!
> 
> Or: Allison does some recruiting and inadvertently teaches Alpha how to manipulate military bureaucracy to further personal goals.

The man on the other side of the double-sided mirror has the same kind of grim eyes Allison saw in the mirror for months after the mission that left her with a shoulder that aches on bad days. He sits at the table quietly, hands occasionally clenching and unclenching, but mostly just lying open. 

She can’t blame him. In his place, she’s not sure whether she’d care enough to be conscious anymore. 

Allison flips through the file one last time for a refresher on the relevant details, and walks in. 

“Private Dexter Grif. Second year, drafted, assigned to the 477th squad previously stationed on Desdoron.”

He doesn’t say anything, just stares at the patch of wall over her shoulder with a set jaw. 

“Your experiences qualify you for an honorable discharge, but it says here you refused.”

“That’s right. Sir.”

“Soldier, your entire squad was killed.” She saw his hands clench. “Your scores are below average. Your record is shoddy. You were drafted.”

When the silence drags on a moment too long, he grates out, “Yes.”

“And you still won’t take the discharge.”

“No, sir.”

And he won’t even rise to the bait and give her any excuse for a discharge. He’s determined to stay.

“Alright then. You’re still on medical trauma leave for the next two weeks. Feel free to let us know if you’ve changed your mind.” She leaves the room without much more of an inkling than she entered with.

* * *

The puzzle of the private who just wouldn’t quit was still bothering her that evening. The only reason she was handling the case was because an old XO of hers had gotten the hot potato that was Desdoron dumped in her lap, and had asked for her help figuring out the kid’s deal. 

Something about the look in his eyes, the one she remembers from days where she didn’t even want to get out of bed, where the world inside her head was more real than the one outside, where even putting on clothing over her throbbing shoulder was an impossible task—

The look in his eyes is what makes her call up his files again, and go looking. 

The answer, when she finds it, is in his personnel file, not the service records. 

_Family: Sister. Grif, Kaikaina, 19._

No mention of parents. 

There’s a little flag attached that means the file’s been updated, so she goes looking for that version. 

It’s from last year, and it lists Kaikaina Grif as a dependent. 

Well, then. 

A little more research tells her that Kaikaina Grif has joined the army as well, and just got out of Basic last month. Her record isn’t as shabby as her brother’s—her physical fitness is definitely better—and she has a few marks for ‘inappropriate conduct’ but otherwise, she’s an utterly unremarkable soldier. 

The date of her enlistment, though…

Desdoron records were destroyed, but the ones from Basic have no logged outgoing calls there before the attack. 

It’s entirely probable that Dexter Grif has no idea his sister is no longer at home, in a position to benefit from a military paycheck.  

Allison sits and stares at the screen for a long while, considering images of the destruction at Desdoron and the fierce way Private Grif held himself and the bright smile on the other Private Grif’s official photo. 

* * *

In the morning, Leonard Church finds an interesting proposal on his desk. 

“You want to deliberately stock the two bases…with underpreforming soldiers?”

“Leonard. Do you remember the most irritating, frustrating, boneheaded team you’ve ever had the misfortune to lead?”

“All too well, unfortunately.” 

“And you remember how after that, working with people who were actually competent suddenly seemed a lot less difficult?”

“…I see your point, Allison.”

* * *

Two months later and half a solar system away, Kaikaina Grif receives her official deployment orders.

“Hell  _yeah!”_  She does a victory fist pump. The base is neat and all, and there are plenty of other bored people in awesome shape to party with, but c’mon. There’s only so many people a girl can bang. 

Okay, that’s a lie, but there’s only so many people a girl can bang in a closed place before she runs out of people who won’t get in trouble for sleeping with her or someone starts getting weird about commitment. 

“Huh. Blood Gulch.” She rolls the name around on her tongue a couple of times. It’s satisfying to chomp down on the end of it. “Blood Gul- _ch_. Wonder if it’s got a good place for raves?”

* * *

Lavernius Tucker, Private, has never been so bored in his entire life. 

This planet is in, literally, the ass-end of nowhere. 

“Holy fuck, I’m so  _bored_ , man.”

The other dude he’s stuck patrolling with, Stuman, lets out a really loud groan. “I can’t  _take_  it anymore, Jesus  _fuck_. We’ve been on this planet for  _thirty-eight hours_  and you have complained for every. Single. One of them. I just want to do my job so we can get off this crappy planet.” He gestures at the right-hand hallway with his gun. “I’ll take this half of the temple. You take the other half. We’ll meet back here in seven hours and head back to base camp. If I see you before then, I will literally shoot your face off.” He runs off down the hall. 

“Dude—we’re not supposed to split up!”

“Don’t care!”

And soon enough, Tucker’s totally alone in a creepy old alien temple on an empty border world that his squad’s been assigned to search for alien artifacts.

“Well, this is just  _great_.”

* * *

Tucker ends up wandering around the outside of the temple, checking along the walls and entrances. He doesn’t think they’ll actually find anything—this is something like the fifth planet he’s been assigned to, and they never find shit. 

He’ll just ramble around out here until he can meet back up with Stuman and they can go back to base. Then he can sleep for a while, and…

And then they’ll get off this shitty planet and go to another shitty planet. 

“Man,” Tucker says to no one in particular. “My life  _sucks._ ”

And then, of course, that’s when he falls down the hole. 

At least the glowing alien plasma sword is kinda cool.

* * *

Allison is in the middle of observing a training session when FILSS announces a call for her. 

“FILSS, is it necessary? Wait, broadcast— _Washington!_ That’s the third hit you’ve taken on your left side so far, and if you don’t start watching it, the fifth one is going to come directly from me.” She watches until she’s sure he’s taken the direction and is guarding it better. “End broadcast. FILSS, who’s the message from?”

“Captain Avery, the commander of the HOD squad, reports that one of his soldiers on Blood Gulch has imprinted on a piece of Sangheili technology.”

Allison checks to make sure the broadcast mike is absolutely off before she launches into all the filthiest curse words twenty-five years in the army have taught her and takes off for her office as fast as she can without actually running. 

* * *

“So let me get this straight,” she says, in a flat tone that her subordinates have all learned to fear. “One of your soldiers went off, alone, despite orders not to do that exact thing—”

“To be fair, his partner was the one responsible for that.”

Allison gives the captain an entirely unimpressed look. “—and somehow, managed to imprint on a totally unknown piece of Sangheili technology that will now not activate for anyone else.”

“That would be the gist of it, sir.”

Out of view of the screen, Allison drummed her fingers on the tabletop and took several deep breaths. “Alright. You have more experience with handling this technology. What would be your recommendation?”

“We know very little about what the sword can do, and prior experience with Sangheili tech has taught us that imprinted technology is usually connected to the specific place where it was found. Amulets that correspond to vehicles, for example. Until we know more about it, I would advise not trying to separate the sword from its location or its bearer. Should that not be feasible, however, it would be more of a priority to keep the technology on planet than connected to its bearer.”

“So you’re saying that we want the sword to remain on planet, and preferably, we want to keep…” she checked the transmitted file. “Private Tucker on planet as well.”

“Yes, sir. But if you’ll pardon me—there’s no place on this planet for him to be stationed, and we can’t exactly leave him here alone.”

Allison typed out an order to FILSS to find her Private Tucker’s file. “How long is your unit supposed to remain on the planet?”

“We’re scheduled to remain for another ten hours, sir. Then our services have been requested on another planet.”

Allison scans the file. “I might have a solution, but I’ll need to run some things down first.”

“Sir, you don’t have to do that. I’m just required by protocol—”

“I  _said_  I might have a solution. Are you saying you’d rather handle this yourself, Captain?”

“I—no. Sir.”

“Then that’s settled. General Church out.” She closes the transmission and sets off perusing Private Tucker’s file. 

* * *

An hour later, she’s yelled at the military contractors until they’ve agreed to speed up construction of the bases, requested a transfer, bothered the R&D techs in the alien artifacts section until they swore up and down that they’d never heard of a human taking on one of the Sangheili’s special swords before, has consumed three cups of coffee, and is working on a fourth. 

Still, the file indicates that the private is exactly the mix of under-driven, competent, frustrating, and creative that she’s been looking for, and the bases should be livable in a week and a half. She can arrange for Private Tucker be transferred back once the bases are complete.  

But that still separates him, the sword, and the planet. Damn. 

Still, she can transfer him now and worry about the headache later. 

It only takes one call with the captain and some digital paperwork before Private Tucker is officially registered as a lower trooper within Project Freelancer. Allison leans back in her chair and rubs at her eyes, trying not to think about anything in particular in the hopes that an answer will pop into her head. 

“General, you have an incoming email marked as ‘urgent’.”

“Put it with the rest of ‘em.” 

“The subject line reads ‘shore leave incidents’.” 

Allison groans. This is the absolute last thing she needs today. 

“FILSS, do you have the records from those three am poker nights the agents think I don’t know about?”

“General, did you not tell Alpha that recording private conversations was a violation of ethics?”

“I did, but I trust you more than him. Any of the agents bragging about anything I should know about?”

FILSS was silent for a moment. “Many things, but nothing about misbehavior while not on this ship.” 

Allison has not spent this long being in charge of colorful space marines without learning to recognize when she really, really would be better off not asking. She finds out everything that happens on board sooner or later, anyways. “Is it from Rosenthal?”

“Yes, General.”

“ _Ugh._  Next time, just tell me straight out, will you? He’s the kind of jackass that thinks women shouldn’t be in the Marines. Always saying I shouldn’t be here if I’m not able to control my soldiers when his own are the rowdiest assholes to ever wear the armor. I get at least one of these stupid things every time he lets his people on leave and they pull some stupid crap. I swear, shore leave—”

She stops. Blinks. 

Grins.

* * *

“Aw, sweet! Shore leave!”

A moment of silence in the empty camp while Tucker reads through the message. 

“Wait…how am I supposed to get off-planet?”

* * *

Back on the Mother of Invention, the program’s been shifting more towards Phase Two—implementation of the Alpha AI with the team in the field. Allison’s been spending a lot of time in R&D looking at their new ideas for armor modifications and providing input. 

She still can’t believe she had to veto the helmet-bubble shield. That was just ridiculous, and how it ever made it past the computer simulations is beyond her. 

The phase-shifting also means that she’s drawing up new training plans and scouting out missions for the team to take, as well intensifying and adapting the current team sessions to prepare the agents for integrating with Alpha and prevent them from doing anything too stupid out of boredom. 

At one point, in the name of increasing the unit’s situational awareness of each other, she declares a weeklong ship-wide paintball ambush war to keep them out of her hair. 

In short, she’s had her hands overfull for a few weeks when Leonard sends her a batch of reports that he got from the other military tech divisions to see if anything pops up that might be suitable for the program. 

She ignores their arrival at first, focusing on yelling at the SPARTAN program for not letting her access Agent Maine’s records, and when they eventually hang up on her, she’s so angry that it takes her a minute to notice the records on her screen flicking across of their own volition. 

“Alpha,” she says, voice reaching a dangerous tone. “Why, exactly, are you reading my files?”

The screen freezes.

“Oh, no you don’t. Get out here.”

Alpha’s hologram pops out, shuffling his feet and looking defensive. 

“Explain. Now.”

“I—uh. I just. Saw that you had the files. And you were busy, and I was bored, and, uh, I know. That guy.” The files on her screen scroll back to a report on an experimental cyborg limb project. One that ended, ultimately, in failure, with only one surviving volunteer subject. 

Allison took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of her nose. “How do you know this…’Richard Simmons’?”

“He, uh. Hacked into Freelancer files about three months ago. By accident. And, y’know, I caught him. Because I’m awesome, just saying. And I was bored, so I went to talk to him. Thought I could deter him from a life of crime or some shit.”

“By not reporting the incident.” Allison, in spite of herself, pulls up the personnel file. Who hacks Freelancer by accident without getting noticed?

“Hey, I told you, it was an accident! Trust me, the guy was too much of a dork to actually be planning anything. He confessed as soon as he saw me. He was just trying to check his evaluations, and then he got curious and went a little further, and a little further, and then he couldn’t access the Freelancer records and wondered why. He never came back, anyways.”

“So you’re telling me that someone who failed every test he ever took managed to hack your systems.”

“Hey, I caught him. He got out, said he wouldn’t do it again, and then he just…dropped off the grid.”

Allison goes back to the incident report and scowls as she makes her way through it. The program was unbearably shady. No wonder the success rate was so low. 

And apparently, the only claim the program could make for it’s sole success was that it hadn’t killed the patient. They hadn’t been able to enhance his strength or speed in any way. 

The only thing Private Simmons had to look forward to was a low-level career, probably some associated health problems, and if his test issues continued, no advancements or any kind of placement outside the army. 

If nothing else, having a disgruntled soldier with the potential to develop a serious grudge and the ability to hack Freelancer was a serious liability in the making. 

She sneaks the recruitment request to Leonard in between shouting matches at one of their daily meetings, ostensibly as an opportunity for further study of the cybernetics in a controlled environment. He agrees without looking too closely, more preoccupied with finding a point in the training proposal for Agent North Dakota he wants to argue with her over. 

Later, Alpha pops up and asks, “How come you didn’t rat me out?”

Allison sighs and cracks her back. “Tell you what. You don’t go through my files without permission again, and I don’t tell Leonard about the hack. Deal?”

“Okay, deal.”

* * *

After the incident with the sword, Allison’s taken to scanning incident reports for alien tech encounters in her increasingly rarer spare time. It’s not her division, but she’s high enough up with enough security clearance to look at whatever she damn well pleases. Not to mention that it’s a pleasant break from yelling at the agents and a good excuse to avoid Leonard. 

Alpha pops up one evening and sits on the edge of her desk, swinging his legs in empty space. 

“Do you need something, Alpha?” she asks, flipping past another report of sex pollen. She’s pretty sure at least half of them are faked, since there’s no way aliens are  _that_  invested in human reproduction. 

“I’m  _bored_.I can fly this ship in my sleep, Carolina’s ignoring me, and the rest of the agents are in class.”

“Well, what do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know.” Alpha blinks out of view, and pops up again closer to her computer, watching reports flick across the screen. “Can I ask why you’re looking at alien tech reports?”

“You can even look, if you like. I was just curious.” She keeps going through another sex pollen report, a prelim speculation on desert ruins, a case of alien AI possession,  _another_  sex pollen report—

“Wait, isn’t that one of the pilots?”

“Which one, the sex pollen thing?”

“No, the last one.” It scrolls back across the screen without Allison’s interference. “Look, Private Caboose.”

“We have a pilot named Caboose?”

Another holographic screen pops up, displaying the file of one Andromeda Caboose, code named Four Seven Niner. Alpha vanishes into the system for only a moment. 

“Yeah, they’re related. She’s been acting weird lately too.”

Allison peruses the file more carefully this time. It’s not a happy incident. The squad the private had been stationed with ran across a Convenant splinter group stationed in an old temple. Over the course of a firefight, Private Caboose managed to somehow rewire the inner sanctum mechanisms to let him in, and then been forcibly integrated with an ancient AI. The AI had eventually left, but he suffered severe neural trauma. Difficulty with memory, inability to focus on a conversation, regression of mental facilities.

“Damn.” Allison leans back in her chair.

Alpha’s still studying the files. His hologram isn’t exactly the most open of interfaces, but right now it looks…tense?

“Could… _I_  do that? To the Freelancers?”

The question is worth considering. “Maybe. You’ve got a couple things going for you—you’re based on a human mind, not alien, so we know you’ll be more compatible. And the suits are designed so you can interface with them instead of having to go directly into the neural implants. But—yeah. There’s always a possibility. S’why we’re being so careful with the process and requiring the agents to take classes. We want to minimize the risk.”

Alpha changes the subject. “What’s going to happen to the Private?”

“If he doesn’t demonstrate an acceptable skill level? Medical discharge and a return home. Army insurance will take care of it from there, make sure he has a place at the nearest treatment facility.”

“The nearest treatment facility is…ten hours away from his home address.”

“Wait, where does he live?”

“…the moon? There are still people living on the moon, seriously?”

“Huh.” Allison drums her fingers on the desktop. “Huh…”

* * *

That evening, when she presents Private Caboose’s file to Leonard for consideration, Alpha watches. With the space that isn’t taken up running subroutines to fly the ship and crack the latest number program, he’s cataloguing all the signs witnessed from Four Seven Niner since the incident was initially reported.

Constant slightly elevated heart rate, 56% more irritated outbursts, a drop in performance on the flight simulators, an uptick in time spent in the gym beating things up.

And this is when her sibling had only gotten himself injured in the line of fire, not killed.

Alpha starts digging through the files of all the other personnel, cross-checking them against other branches of the UNSC. Some last names are more common than others, but he manages to whittle it down fairly quickly.

Most of the soldiers don’t exactly come from large family backgrounds. The ones that do are 40% likely to have other family members also in the service. From there, it’s a matter of cross-checking communication logs and calculating an average to measure how close they are.

In the end, he puts together a list of roughly 25 personnel with family members in active service who they still maintain contact with. He quietly earmarks those files so he’ll be notified immediately if anything changes, but most of them seem competent enough to survive. 

After he finishes the personnel, he runs the same algorithms on the freelancer agents themselves. The results he gets back there are even lower—agents were informed upon application of the high risks of the program, and those who chose to sign up were usually the ones who didn’t have to worry about their families. Not to mention that communications are pretty restricted.

It turns out that the only agent to have a relative currently serving is Agent Washington, with a brother in the infantry. Alpha goes digging for more information, and ends up drawing up short. 

“Oh, you have  _got_ to be kidding me.”

* * *

Allison is going through her transmissions the next morning when she comes across an unusual piece of paperwork.

_A…recommendation for the sim trooper program?_

The ‘from’ line lists Leonard’s computer, and he’s the only other one with the theoretical power to select candidates. Theoretical only, because he’s never actually cared enough to try. 

Out of sheer curiosity, Allison peruses the file.  

At the end of it, she’s no less confused. Amused, definitely, but still confused. 

At least she knows for sure now that this didn’t come from Leonard. 

“FILSS, where did this transmission come from?”

“The transmission’s originating IP address is currently registered to the Director’s personal computer.”

Allison sighs. Only one person it could be, then. 

“ _Alpha!”_  She uses her best new-recruits voice, but even then, it takes him a while to show. He’s got his arms crossed, and her long experience with body language in armor gives her the idea that he’s defensive. 

“Alpha,” she says in her wheedling-Leonard-into-something voice. “Why, exactly, did you send me this file?”

“File? What file? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She gives him a flat look. “Either you come clean and explain or I tell Leonard that you’ve figured out how to lie and you get to spend the day with him asking you questions and poking bits of your code.”

“Geez! Don’t sell out a guy like that. Okay, okay, yeah, it was me.”

“Why?”

“I…well, you wanted new recruits, right? Figured I’d help you out. I mean, the dude’s been holding  _wine and cheese hours_  on the battlefield, you’re…you’re really not gonna get anymore ‘not-high-achieving’ than that.”

Allison frowns at the AI’s holographic projection. 

He scuffs one foot. 

She gives him what seven-year-old Carolina once christened the Eyebrow Raise of Doom. 

“Fine! And…he mightsortabeAgentWashington’slittlebrother.” The end of the sentence was blurted out in such a rush that it takes her a moment to put it together. 

When it clicks, Allison can’t stop the grin from spreading across her face. 

“Wait—wait, why are you doing that? Stop it!”

“You were  _worried,_ ” she says in a sing-song voice. “You were  _worried_  about what would happen to Washington if his little brother got  _hurt!_ ”

“I was not! Shut up!”

“You  _care!_ ”

“I do  _not!”_

“This is adorable.” Allison props her chin on her hand and keeps grinning at Alpha. “You got all worried after Four Seven Niner, didn’t you? Is that where this came from?”

“Oh, shut up.” Alpha logs off in a manner that distinctly resembles a huff.

Allison, chuckling, just adds Private Donut’s file to the documents she’s taking to her morning meeting with Leonard. 

* * *

“…a wine and cheese hour?”

Allison shrugs. “You have to admit he’d be conducive to creative thinking.”

He doesn’t look convinced, but signs off on the paper anyways. “Are you planning to do any more recruiting, Allison?”

Allison glances over Leonard’s shoulder to where one of the ship’s security cameras is focusing just a little bit closer. 

“Who knows?” She shrugs. “Not for now, anyways.”

“Thank you ever so much for informing me,” he drawls in his driest tone. “I take it the introduction is still on schedule for later today?”

Allison mentally reviews her plans for the day. “I want to run them through their paces while they’re fresh. Say…around eleven?”

“I’ll be there.”

* * *

On her way to supervise the agents at training, Alpha pops out of nowhere and drifts along behind her. 

“You really did it.”

Allison snorts and doesn’t break stride. “Of course I did.”

“ _You_  care too.”

“Uh huh. Which is why  _I_ was the one who went digging through personnel records to find anyone who might be a liability.”

“Yeah, yeah. Softie.”

“You wouldn’t even know what to do with a sad Washington, would you?” Allison muses. 

“Oh, fuck off.” But, unsurprisingly, he sounds cheerful. 

Allison reaches the observation window and looks out over the squad below. 

Agents South Dakota and Florida are warming up with a hand-to-hand sparring match, two vicious fighters taking delight in going up against someone as unafraid to pull punches as they are. North Dakota compares sniper sights with Wyoming, their helmets bobbing as they discuss something she can’t hear. Connecticut is walking Washington through the finer points of a knife move, demonstrating on a complacent Agent Maine as the giant man runs through his warm-up stretches. Agent New York is arguing with Agent Carolina over a holographic schematic, waving his hands around as she gestures at various highlighted points. 

Looking down at them, Allison can feel a tremendous swelling of pride behind her breastbone. 

“Of course I care,” she tells Alpha, quietly. “I mean, just look at ‘em. Who wouldn’t?”

“Softie.” The holographic projection drifts up closer to the glass, even though he can get a perfectly fine view from any of the camera in the training room itself.

She watches with him for a few minutes. “You ready for them to meet you?”

“I guess. I mean, it’s gonna happen anyways, right?”

“Not necessarily. We can always push it back if you’re scared.”

AIs couldn’t, technically, splutter, but Alpha sure tried. “I—I’m not  _scared_.”

“Are you ready, though?”

He was silent for a bit, and Allison waited. This wasn’t something she wanted to rush. 

“You know….yeah. I think I am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Donut siblings theory borrowed from secretlystephaniebrown on Tumblr; Caboose siblings theory courtesy of goodluckdetective.  
> Come find me on [Tumblr!](sroloc--elbisivni.tumblr.com) Talk to me about this verse and I will spill lots of headcanons at you.  
> Unsure when the next chapter will be posted. Should revolve around the Freelancers interacting with Alpha.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alpha, meet the Freelancers. Freelancers, meet Alpha. Those with sense, run screaming.   
> Oh, and plot happens, despite the author's best intentions.

Leonard and Dr. Price arrive exactly five minutes before eleven, carrying tablets and the independent holograph projection unit. Allison has FILSS play an air horn noise to get the attention of the soldiers on the obstacle course. Because she can. 

Most of them aren’t in a dangerous position or didn’t startle enough to affect their performance, but Wyoming loses his grip on a rope mid-swing, falls into a pit and is subsequently mocked. 

“Glad to see you’re having fun,” Allison drawls over the comm. “ _If_  it’s not too much trouble, assemble off the training area.”

The tone, which her agents have already learned promises that she is not interested in playing games, gets them off the floor with a minimum of mockery. FILSS quickly resets the floor from the obstacle course to a blank demonstration mode. 

Leonard strides into the room and stands in front of the agents, leaving Price to fiddle with the holographic projection device. Allison takes her own place next to the table it rests on, maintaining her stoic expression. 

The agents are in a neat line, Carolina keeping herself just a little bit apart. That gets their attention and makes them exchange glances because this just went from ‘ordinary lecture’ to ‘something big enough the team leader is already part of it.’ 

Leonard clears his throat and launches into his speech. 

“Agents, you are to be congratulated for advancing so far in the program. You have been recipients of the best possible training and equipment and have turned them to your advantage. Today, your training pays off, because today, agents of alpha squad, you advance into Phase Two.”

He pauses for dramatic effect and Allison only refrains from rolling her eyes because she doesn’t have her helmet on and she’s supposed to be the one setting a good example. 

“As you are aware, your role in Project Freelancer was to create a unified, cohesive team. This, however, is only incidental to our primary goal—the successful integration of a smart AI, shared among a group of soldiers. To that end, you have received extensive coursework in AI theory and history, while the Alpha AI has been undergoing an education of its own. The time has come for you to meet.

“Now, you must understand that the Alpha is, bar none, the single greatest advancement in recent AI theory. He is not only highly intelligent and capable of mastering complex systems in a fraction of a second, but intuitive and responsive on unprecedented levels and based on one of the greatest scientific minds of our times.”

Allison tries not to choke on air. She’ll have to bring that back to Leonard later and mock him for it.

“The Alpha AI is one of the most sophisticated pieces of advanced technology you will ever experience, Agents. I hope you all understand how highly it speaks of you that you are participants in this program.” A sweep of his gaze causes him to apparently conclude that they are sufficiently awestruck, before he pauses at the side of the table and turns to the holographic projection unit. “Alpha? You may come out now.”

Alpha’s favored white projection flickers to life, three feet off the ground and a foot high. Allison can’t tell with the helmets, but she’s willing to bet that all of their eyes just went wide. 

She has to hand it to Leonard; he sure knows how to set a mood.

“What’s up, assholes?”

Allison bites down hard on the inside of her cheek as her chest seizes with suppressed laughter. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Leonard covering his eyes with one hand and letting out an enormous sigh. 

* * *

Alpha’s first encounter with the Freelancers definitely sets the tone. The next week involves less actual training than acclimation, all of the agents getting used to an extra presence on the team and his voice in their ears. 

It also involves quite a bit of complaining as Leonard packs the rest of the full AI coursework into the rest of the week. Since Carolina took care of her coursework a while ago, she spends that time with Allison and sometimes Alpha, planning out strategies and techniques. 

Alpha is only ‘sometimes’ because now that the final restriction is off he’s been having the time of his life alternately hassling and chatting with the agents. 

Carolina supposes she’s had worse weeks. Sometimes.

* * *

“Is the government hiding aliens at Area 51?”

Carolina has to actually put down a report on the field suitability of a domed shield to stare at Alpha’s projection for that. “Alpha. We’re at war with aliens. Right now.”

“So…is that a no?”

“Don’t go hacking the military files on Area 51. It hasn’t even been inhabited in centuries, and I need your attention here.”

“York was right. You are part of it.” He sounds triumphant. 

She resists the urge to bang her head against the table. Why had anyone ever thought this was a good idea?

“York?”

“Yeah, he and Connie know a lot about this stuff.”

“I see. And where’s York right now?”

“Hmm? Oh, rec room.”

Carolina’s sharkiest grin is well hidden by her helmet. “Could you go check the specs on the last of the enhancements for me? We’re starting on them tomorrow.”

“What, you’re not going to tell me about the aliens?”

“ _There are no—”_  She stops herself through great force of will. “Just…please go check the enhancements?”

“Yeah, yeah, what the fuck ever.” He vanishes in a huff.

One shortcut to the rec room later, she’s standing on the table and dangling York by the ankle off the side. He’s remarkably, frustratingly, annoyingly unafraid. And smug.  

“ _No. More. Conspiracy theories.”_

“But I didn’t even get to tell him about the faked moon landing yet! Or the— _ow. OW! UNCLE!”_

Carolina leaves off shaking him as Wash wanders into the room, skateboard tucked possessively under one arm and face dark. He stops dead, stares at the two of them, and then announces rather loudly, “I do not want to know. Ever,” before leaving. 

“I don’t suppose you could let me down?” York asks after they’ve both watched Wash retreat. 

Carolina does. Expediently. 

“ _Ow.”_

* * *

The next time Carolina runs into Wash, he still has his skateboard with him, and he’s looking even more harried than usual. 

“C’mon, can’t you just show me?”

“ _No._ ”

Carolina hears Alpha before she sees him, a white light flashing in and out at random intervals because Wash is walking too fast for his projection to keep up in the hallway. “You won’t even leave it in your rooms anymore!”

“Because you keep trying to  _steal_  it. You can’t even use it!” His voice is getting higher pitched. 

“Well, I bet you can’t either! You’re just trying to look cool.”

“You’re not gonna get me that way.”

“What’s going on here?” Carolina isn’t entirely sure she wants to know, but she’d rather not have it explode in her face later because she wasn’t aware. 

“He’s an idiot.” 

The look on Wash’s face and Alpha’s horrified silence as they realize they spoke in unison is something Carolina plans to keep close to her cold, cold, heart. 

“Whoa. You’re not allowed to call me an idiot. Artificial  _intelligence,_  remember?”

“Are we sure that’s what the ‘I’ stands for? Because you think pirates are better than ninjas.”

“Pirates are totally better than ninjas, shut the fuck up.”

“A ninja could kick a pirate’s butt, any day.”

“Except the pirate wouldn’t be  _alone_  because pirates have ships and parrots and aren’t lame fucking loners trying too hard to be cool.”

Carolina’s pretty sure they’ve already forgotten she’s there. 

“Guys. Guys.  _Guys!”_

They break off their argument to look at her, confused. 

“Wash, put your skateboard back in your bunk. Alpha, leave it alone. Both of you have somewhere to be right now, so I suggest you get there.” She stares them down. 

Wash mutters a quick “Yeah, boss,” and heads off. Alpha waits longer to prove she’s not the boss of him before vanishing and reappearing as a spark over Wash’s shoulder. 

She calls after them just before they round the corner, “Oh, and ninjas are  _totally_  better than pirates.”

“I  _told_ you!”

* * *

North’s the first one to get a go with an enhancement and Alpha helping out. It’s the same bubble shield South has, and with Maine’s scheduled invisibility enhancement still glitching, the safest enhancement to experiment with.  

Since South’s temper might make cooperation…difficult, North’s the one doing the first test run. 

Carolina squashes down the little flare of envy; she wanted to have a chance to play with her new speed boost. But that will come later. 

North’s out on the floor, armored up, with Alpha flickering in and out nervously. The Director, General, and Counselor are all observing, and the rest of the agents have squeezed in as well. 

“FILSS, begin the test,” the Director orders, hands behind his back. “Be aware that Alpha has no authorization to interfere with your systems.”

“Understood, Director. Beginning test.”

Down on the floor, a domed shield expands out from North, rotating rapidly in a circle. The twins have both run it before, but only for short periods of time, and never with much control. 

South’s record is shattered in about five seconds, but she just lets out a low whistle and cracks her knuckles. “Can’t wait till it’s my turn.”

“Shield holding steady,” FILSS reports. 

“Open fire,” the General orders, eyes tracking the shield’s movement.  

The floor slides back beyond the shield’s radius to allow four turret-mounted guns to rise. The shield easily takes the impacts,  _pings_  and  _cracks_  echoing all the way up to the deck. 

“Cut the power, FILSS,” the Director orders. 

“Wait,” the General cuts in. She watches for another minute, and then grins. “Okay,  _now_  start cutting the power. Oh, and transmit from the microphones.”

Alpha’s voice cuts in. “ _Are you kidding? I’m fucking amazing. I’m awesome. I’m so on top of—power. Losing power, why the fuck are we losing power?”_

North’s voice.  _“Can you switch to—“_

_“Only necessary contact points to conserve remaining power, yeah, yeah, this isn’t my first rodeo, kid.”_

_“You’re less than a year old!”_

_“Still more mature than you, dickhead.”_

Even with the bickering and the greatly reduced shields, Alpha’s still blocking all the shots. 

“Add variables—if, of course, that’s acceptable to you, General.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything.”

Carolina’s the only one close enough to hear the Counselor’s exasperated sigh. 

 _“Good. Nice work.”_ North’s keeping up a stream of chatter and praise on the floor.

“ _Can you just shut the fuck up for a second? You’re kind of throwing me off my game, here.”_

South, from her position at the window, lets out a loud, wicked cackle. 

* * *

Wyoming gets the next shot at working with Alpha, and because Carolina’s mother has a sadistic streak, none of the other agents are aware of anything other than that they’re all having a lot more accidents that day. 

Connie and York, as always, are suspicious, but Carolina has seen them get suspicious over the janitorial staff rotating their cleaning routine, so she doesn’t set any store by it. 

Until the training for the day involves full-armor sparring matches and she can’t beat Wyoming. 

He blocks every hit she makes with a laughably infuriating ease. Every strike is somehow anticipated and countered. He’s catching moves that she knows for a fact have laid him out flat on his ass before. 

Halfway through the third round, though, he takes a hit to the chest that sends him crashing to the ground”

Wyoming groans. “That’s the third bloody time I’ve fallen for that one. Thirty seconds, this time.”

“Jeez, if you need thirty seconds to recover from one hit, maybe you should just step off the floor.” Carolina cracks her knuckles, taking a moment of satisfaction in the hit. 

But Wyoming just stands back up and tips his head to the side. “What do you mean ‘not happening’?” 

Alpha pops out from over his shoulder. “I mean  _not fucking happening._  The thing overheats with too many uses, and you’ve racked up a good two hours winning these fights. Which, for the record,  _I told you was a stupid idea._ ”

“Hang on, time out,” Carolina orders. “What’s going on here?”

She glares them both down from behind her visor, not at all pleased with this development. The only reason for Wyoming to have Alpha with him would be to test his—

Her eyes go wide inside her helmet before narrowing in Alpha’s direction. “You got your enhancement.”

“Yeah, I’m out,” Alpha says quickly, vanishing. 

“Cowardly bugger,” Wyoming mutters. 

Carolina lets herself grin inside her helmet. “FILSS? Please reset the floor for training exercise seventeen and notify the others that Wyoming’s the target.”

“ _Damn.”_  He takes off running for the opposite side of the room as FILSS pulls up a labyrinth from the floor. 

Yes, she can kick his ass herself, but this way  _everyone_  gets a turn. She’ll let her team have fun too. 

Besides, maybe if she tires them out enough, Connie and York won’t have the energy to gloat. 

That doesn’t really work.

(“We  _told you so._ ”

“People really need to listen to us more often.”

“This is, literally, the first time you two were right. Stop being so smug.”

“The first time we were  _proven_  right, maybe.”

“The rest will follow.”

“ _Our time will come._ ”

“You two are such dorks.”

“Dorks who were  _right_.”

“This  _one time!”_ )

* * *

York runs exactly one mission with Alpha. 

In the aftermath, Carolina has a meeting with the Director, General, and Counselor, and they spend three minutes sitting and staring at one another before Allison finally says what they’re all thinking.

“Never again.”

“Seconded.”

“All in favor?” Hands go up. “Wonderful. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go make nice with Charon Industries and negotiate a return of their property. One of you gets to arrange suitable disciplinary action.”

* * *

The negotiation is eventually settled with a lot of bureaucratic brouhaha Carolina doesn’t have to worry about and a ‘mission’ that she does.

The General calls Carolina into her office and sighs. “As an apology or a sign of goodwill, whatever the chairman’s calling it, we’ve been asked to run a small security check at a Charon facility. Just a two or three person team, trying to infiltrate and gather information at an unspecified, unanticipated time and see how far we get.

Carolina nods, calculating in her mind. “York and Connecticut, definitely—Florida if we really need backup—”

“No,” Allison cuts her off, waving her hand. “I don’t trust that man as far as I could throw him without armor. I definitely don’t want to give him a heads-up on what our best is capable of. I’m sending in the twins.”

Carolina is more than a bit surprised, but it does make sense. South and North are a good team, a great team, but South doesn’t do ‘stealthy’. Still, her worst is far and away beyond the ‘best’ of most regular soldiers. They should be able to pull it off, or at least look convincing if they can’t. “Is there a particular reason you’re informing me?”

“Well, one because you deserve to know what your people are doing. Two, because I’d like you there to back them up, since I’m seizing the opportunity to let Alpha have a field test and your supervision would be welcome.”

“Sounds like fun. Where are we going?”

Allison stands up, flicking the screen of her tablet. “Bjørndal Cryogenics Facility. I’m having FILSS alert the twins right now. Briefing’s in ten minutes.”

“This is moving fast.” Carolina moves to walk a step behind the General as she strides out of the room.

The General’s lips thin. “I don’t trust Charon one bit. We’ve been given permission to mount a surprise raid, essentially. It’s a four-hour flight from here; they’ll have enough time to warn their people, but not enough to prepare for us to come knocking.”

“You…really don’t like this guy.”

“I don’t like any man who knows my rank and still calls me ‘Mrs.’” 

* * *

Carolina is keeping an ear on the comms because she’s supposed to be supervising this mission, Niner, and  _not_  because she’s hovering, thank you very much. 

More than that, it’s just plain entertaining. North’s set up on top of one of the vents, hiding his heat signature in the steam as he covers for South making her way into the facility. 

Alpha is in full nag mode. Right now Carolina’s getting an earful of North trying to politely shut down attempts to ‘help’ him aim his sniper rifle.

_“No, if you just angle that way—“_

_“The wind’s against me—look, I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you’ve been alive, just let me—”_

_“I’m sorry, which one of us is a fucking targeting computer? Just let the master work, kay?”_

_“…That’s going to end up five feet away from where I need it to go.”_

_“Oh, really?”_ A pause. “ _…huh.”_  Another pause. “ _Y’know, I’m just gonna go see if South needs any help.”_

South, according to South, does not need any help. South, according to Alpha, is five feet away from getting them all caught and shot in the head and dumped in the ocean. 

_“Oh my god, SET YOUR FUCKING TRACKERS.”`_

_“That’ll only slow me down. Hey, what are the odds of me making that jump?”_

_“About seventy percent, go for it. Look, I will set them_ for _you. There, do—HOLY SHIT THERE’S A GUY RIGHT BEHIND YOU.”_

_“WHAT?!”_

Carolina buries her face in her hands and waits for the alarms to start going off. 

Much to her surprise, they don’t. 

“ _South, sitrep,”_ North orders. 

“ _One guy, took him out with nonlethal measures, as ordered. Stuffing him in a closet now.”_

 _“I_ told _you! I fucking_ told _you to set—”_

_“Yeah, yeah, you’re awesome, Al, now where are we going?”_

_“Don’t call me that. Left up here.”_

South makes her way through the facility with only a few close calls, heralded by a couple quiet swears, Alpha yelling, and distant grunts. Carolina listens to South’s notes to Alpha on security and North’s steady commentary over the comms and tries not to twitch out of her skin with nervousness.  

“ _Okay, we’ve made it to the databanks.”_

“Alright. Alpha, don’t mess around, we’re in enough trouble already. There should be a pretty clearly marked data packet. Leave everything else alone.”

“ _Oh, you’re no fun. Hey, found it—oh, do you wanna fucking go?”_

“Alpha?”

_“Security’s a bitch, but it’s never met anything like me. Forty-two seconds to completion.”_

“Forty-two seconds? How big is this file?”

“ _Uh.”_  A pause. _“Are you totally sure that we’re_ only  _supposed to touch that file and nothing else? Like, totally-totally sure? Not even a teeny-tiny employee manifest that was maybe really close to the thing I was supposed to touch?”_

“Alpha.” Carolina can’t stop a growl. “What. Did you. Do.”

_“I swear I didn’t—SOUTH, GUY!”_

“ _I see him, I got hi—”_

_“DON’T DO THAT!”_

_“What’s going—”_

North doesn’t even get to finish his sentence before the alarms start blaring. Carolina swears under her breath as she starts running preflight checks.

“Alpha, cut the download,  _now,_  and we will be having  _words_  later. North, South, I want you at the rendezvous five seconds ago.  _Niner!”_

* * *

They manage the extraction and only break a small tank, a rotating turret, and someone’s leg. Also, a bit of Niner’s ship. It’s tiny. Barely even a scratch. She can’t possibly be  _that_  mad about it. 

Although Carolina knows for a fact that at least three of the barrel rolls the pilot does on the way back to the MOI are completely unnecessary. 

* * *

“What went wrong?”

South crosses her arms and glares at the wall behind the general’s head. “Ask the jackass who’s hiding out in North’s armor right now.”

Allison refrains from mentioning that Alpha jumped out of North’s armor and North doesn’t know where he is. “Agent South Dakota.” There’s working around South’s authority issues and then there’s the agent disobeying a commanding officer.

To her credit, she realizes her mistake and pulls up straight. “I got Alpha to the terminal without any serious incidents, sir. Seven hostiles, avoided four, dispatched three without raising any alarms. Assumed that we’d be done and out before any of them could miss their check-ins, which, technically, we were. Took notes on the security measures and fallbacks, as ordered. Alpha was in the middle of his download when a guy came around the corner carrying coffee. I went to disable him, Alpha yelled at me to stop and fucking  _locked_  my armor. The guy got to the alarm before I could stop him. Knocked the guard out then, grabbed Alpha, and ran for it. Had to fight our way out at one point, but Carolina and Niner pulled off a stunt pickup and got all of us out of there.”

Allison makes a note on her tablet to look official that just reads  _put end to pilot stunt betting pool before someone gets killed_  before looking back up at South. “At some point in the next day I’d like you to submit a full write-up of the obvious security failures. Put three of the less noticeable ones in a different file, but attach it.”

“…sir?”

“Dismissed, Agent South Dakota.”

After South leaves, Allison sighs and leans back for a moment, before resuming her professional pose. “Alpha, I know you’re here.”

She doesn’t, but the worst that could happen is that the AI doesn’t appear and she ends up having to order FILSS to scrub the footage so Alpha never finds out how she keeps doing that.

A light flickers sullenly on her desk, though, so that doesn’t need to happen. 

“Quit sulking. You were part of the team, you owe me a report. Why did you lock up South’s armor?”

Alpha doesn’t project, but his voice comes out clear. “The guy. With the coffee. If she’d hit him, the trajectory of the cups would have sent one of them into the alarm button. I was just—I just needed more time.” His voice gets quieter. “I needed to figure out what to do, and I was going to, I just—I just needed more  _time_.”

“Sometimes you don’t get more time. This was a  _low-risk_  mission.” Allison refuses to go gently on this point—Alpha needs to learn it, and he needs to learn it now. “You can’t think forever in the middle of a battle. You have to keep moving, keep reacting, keep adapting. You can’t freeze, and you  _absolutely_ cannot lock down your soldiers to buy yourself more time to think!”

“I KNOW!” Alpha’s volume is louder than she’s ever heard it, and Allison forces herself not to flinch.

“I know,” he says, quieter. “I  _know_  that, I just…I didn’t know what to do.”

There’s silence, and Allison’s hand rises up to rub her bad shoulder. “South had an acceptable solution. You don’t get perfection on a mission. If there’s nothing you can do…you ride out the situation. You deal with the fallout. And you trust the people you work with to do what they can, not deliberately hinder their actions.”

“Oh gee. Words of fucking wisdom.” His tone shifts to sarcastic and defensive. 

“It’s worked for me so far. I don’t ever want to hear that you’re overriding an agent’s autonomy again. Now get out of my office and go start groveling to South. You two are going to be working together tomorrow and figuring out some way to communicate, or so help me I will lock you both in a room with Price and have him pull out some old-school bonding exercises.” 

After the light flickers out, Allison makes another note on her tablet:  _talk to Price about how to make perfectionist ease up._  After a moment, she adds a third:  _punch Leonard._  Because basing an AI on a finicky, obsessive scientist and sending it into a situation as messy and unpredictable as combat was and continues to be an awful, awful idea.

* * *

Maine has largely been ignoring Alpha. His enhancement still hasn’t passed testing yet, and he hasn’t been especially interested in chatting, either. 

Seeing how the AI has been making a game out of harassing Wash, Maine’s not particularly unhappy with the current state of mutual ignorance. 

A state abruptly shattered by a holographic projection appearing on the mess hall table. 

“I mean, what does she expect me to do? Says  _get the data, get out, don’t get caught_ , and when I try to make sure we don’t get caught, suddenly,  _I’m_  the bad guy?”

“…Who?” Maine asks, blinking over his spoonful of soup.

“Allison. The General.” Alpha’s hologram kicks sullenly at the table. “I’m not  _human_ , I can see stuff you guys  _can’t_  and I know what I’m  _doing._  And she just treats me like some fucking  _kid!_ ” 

Maine tries the soup again. It’s cooled off a bit, but not enough to be unappetizing. “You’re thirteen months old.”  
“Oh, fuck you. I just  _said_  I’m not fucking human. And your counting system’s stupid.”

Maine just shrugs. He didn’t come up with it. 

He dunks a cracker in his soup before something occurs to him.

“Why are you talking to me?”

Alpha flaps a holographic arm. “She never yells at  _you._ ”

Fair point. “What did you do?”

“I—” Alpha stops himself before he could launch into another tirade. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

Maine pauses with a mouthful of soup and tries to convey  _are you serious_  just by looking at Alpha. If he doesn’t want to talk about it, why is he here, talking to Maine?

The AI must realize it himself, because he mutters an “oh, fuck you,” and poofs out of sight. 

* * *

Maine doesn’t really expect to see Alpha again, but he’s in the gym two hours later when the AI pops out of the camera. 

“Okay, fine, you win, I wanna talk about it.”

Maine pauses for a moment and tilts his head at Alpha before returning to his routine.

“I mean, the coffee cup was  _going to hit the alarm._  I crunched the numbers  _five times,_  there was no way to avoid it. And, and she wouldn’t have fucking  _listened,_  there was a, like, three percent chance that she would have heard me in time to stop and even less that she would have  _done_ anything about it.”

Maine punches the bag again. “Get to the point.”

“Geez, cranky.” Alpha huffs. “This is valuable information here. Vital to my thought processes.”

Maine finishes his turn at the punching bag with one extremely hard punch before turning his back on Alpha’s projection and walking over to the weights. 

“So yeah, stuff was going down on mission and there was no way South was going to do anything in time so I just kinda locked down her armor to buy some time.”

Maine freezes picking up the barbell, holds very still for all of five seconds, and then spins around and hurls the weight at Alpha’s projection.

The little sprite yelps in terror and vanishes, and the weight follows through on its arc to crash into the floor hard enough to crack it. He reappears almost immediately. 

“What the fuck, asshole?”

Maine just turns around and strides out of the gym, fists clenched and only not shaking through sheer force of will. 

* * *

The AI doesn’t reappear until Maine is at dinner, picking disinterestedly at the peas. Just like before, the hologram pops up without warning.

“Okay, I don’t think you were—”

Maine flicks a pea through him, causing a buzz of static.

“Oh, very funny. Like I said, I don’t think—” Pea. “I don’t think you—” Pea. “I don’t think—“ Pea. “ _Would you stop fucking—“_ Pea. “— _throwing those things alread—“_

Maine holds up his throwing hand as a sign of surrender. 

“ _Thank_  you. Now—”

Maine thinks that it’s a bit of a shame Alpha’s projection doesn’t show a face. His expression at having a chunk of ham sail straight through him would probably be hilarious.

“Oh, very funny. Jackass. You done?”

Maine considers it, throws one more piece of ham for good measure, and then picks up his plate to leave. 

“Wait, no! I didn’t mean it like that—come on, sit the fuck back down.” Maine keeps walking. “ _Ugh._ Please?”

Maine considers it, and ends up sitting back down mostly because he still has most of his food left to eat. Alpha probably won’t be any harder to tune out than Wash.

He isn’t harder to tune out than Wash. Maine just eats, nods vaguely at what feel like appropriate places and only looks up when it’s quiet again. 

Alpha is giving him an unimpressed look. “You’re not fucking listening to me, are you.”

“Nope.”

The lack of vocal cords doesn’t stop the AI from making a guttural, disgusted sound. “Why the fuck not?”

“You were wrong, and stupid, and dangerous. Don’t care why.” Maine stands up and flicks one last pea through Alpha’s projection. The static is indistinguishable from his sputtering. “Apologize. Don’t do it again.” With that, he leaves. 

The next time he sees the AI, he’s hovering next to South’s shoulder, and she’s not scowling anymore. 

Good.

* * *

Allison and Leonard have started to do their paperwork together to make it easier to compare notes. The accounts sheets she’s poring over are nowhere near riveting enough to keep her from noticing when her husband makes a “hmm” sound.

“Hmm?” She asks, looking up. “I know that ‘hmm’. That’s a ‘someone reported incorrect lab results’ hmm.”

“I’m taking the opportunity to review the extra information Agent South Dakota and Alpha retrieved from their most recent mission.”

“When Alpha got handsy and forgot his manners? Really, Leonard, I thought you at least might have some restraint. Hargrove hates us enough as it is.”

Leonard snorts. “I was under the impression you took being hated by that man as a compliment. But I found something…interesting.”

“Good interesting or ‘how did Agent York set that on fire’ interesting?”

“’Charon Industries has some interesting inconsistencies in their employee manifests’ interesting.”

Allison rolls her chair over to look, and blinks at the records. “Hmm.”

* * *

Connie knocks on the door of the General’s office and waits.

“Come in.”

The door slides open without further prompting.

“You wanted to see me, sir?” As soon as she’s inside, the door slides shut and takes on the telltale blue glow of electronic soundproofing.

“What do you know about Charon Industries, Agent Connecticut?” The General flips through a paper file, waiting for her answer. 

Connie takes a moment to gather her thoughts. “They’re a long-established umbrella corporation involved in a lot of different industries. Strong ties to the military. Big weapons manufacturer. Involved in the construction of this ship, I think.”

“Accurate on all counts.” She sets the file down. “The corporation is also in possession of a cryogenics facility. The company chairman, Malcolm Hargrove, asked us to preform a security check on that facility a week ago. Part of that check was to retrieve some data, and that data turned up some…inconsistencies.”

“Inconsistencies?”

“At least one person we recognize as a highly skilled mercenary, listed under the janitorial staff of a currently-unaccounted for shuttle. What with the sway Charon has been building up where their defense contracts are concerned—which, you didn’t hear from me, you understand—this is just another instance in a long line of concerning developments.”

“I, see, sir. And…why are you ‘not’ telling me this?

The General pulls up a holographic report. “I see you’ve been working on using your enhancement with and without Alpha?”

“Yes, sir.” 

“Do you feel comfortable in your ability to use it in a combat situation?”

“Yes, sir.” Connie has a feeling she knows where this is going.

“I’m assigning you a subterfuge mission.” She swipes a file and an alert pops up in Connie’s HUD. “Your mission is to infiltrate a nearby Charon Industries facility, obtain information, and get out without being seen. You’ll have a pilot to take you there and back, but otherwise you’ll be totally without backup. If you’re seen, we’ll deny it. If you’re caught…well. Don’t get caught. Can you handle this?”

Connie knows that if she’s caught, she’s out of the program. If the situation with Charon is as risky as it sounds, holding onto a confirmed spy is as good as an admission. The only way the project would survive that kind of hit is by claiming she had been acting as a rogue agent. 

“The situation is that bad, sir?”

The General’s face is grim enough for confirmation. 

“If I’m close enough to avoid subspace, you won’t even need to assign me a pilot.” 

The General nods at her. “Thank you, Agent. The relevant file has been sent to you. We should be in range after 0200 tomorrow. Do you have any further questions?”

“Just one, sir. Does this mission have anything to do with where Florida was?”

An eloquent eyebrow raise. “I can promise you that Agent Florida’s assignment was entirely unrelated.”

“Understood, sir.”

The General turns back to her paperwork and the door slides open in a clear dismissal. 

Connie waits until she’s back in her bunk to review the file, but she’s distracted enough with her thoughts not to notice the way the security cameras follow her from the moment she leaves the office. 

* * *

Connie’s knocked out the guard on the server room and has less than two minutes left to find the files she needs before the alarm system finishes rebooting. 

Her preferred approach in a situation with this much info available would be to grab all she can, but she doesn’t have the time to get everything, doesn’t know if the specific information she needs would be in the data dump, and can’t risk any nasty viruses being attached to the wrong files and just waiting for someone’s carelessness to activate them. 

So she’s frantically scanning, trying to spot the file she needs and keep an ear on the alarms at the same time. 

Connie’s sure she’s pulled riskier missions before joining the project, but she doesn’t have the spare brainpower to think of one at the moment. 

A file name several lines down gets highlighted in white, and it only takes her one click and a few seconds of reading to confirm it’s the right one. A few more seconds to run a security check that comes back…eerily clean.

_Wait a minute._

But since the ticking countdown in her HUD makes that not an option, she settles for snagging the drive and running like hell. 

“Alpha, you took care of the cameras?” she asks.

“ _How did you_ do _that?_ ” he shrieks in her ear. “ _And yes, of course I fucking took care of the cameras, do you think this is amateur hour or something?_ ”

Well, it’s an unexpected development, but it’s definitely useful. She cuts her exit time by a full twenty seconds because she doesn’t have to worry about avoiding the cameras. 

The facility’s blowing up with alarms by the time she takes off, but it’s too late for them to do anything now. 

“Y’know,” Connie says, as soon as she’s damn sure she’s shaken any pursuit. “I’m pretty sure the General told me not to expect backup.”

A little light blinks on to her right. “…what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her? Or me?”

* * *

Allison will give Hargrove this—the man isn’t an idiot. Connecticut has just barely radioed in with confirmation of a successful mission before Leonard forwards her an incredibly passive-aggressive email with enough layers of “I know that you know that  _I_  know” to give her headache.

But fortunately for them, “He still has no proof.”

“Allison—”

“If he  _had_  proof, he wouldn’t have even bothered to contact us before going right to the top and shutting us down. He doesn’t have a leg to stand on, and he knows it. The only thing he can do is wait for us to slip up.” 

“Which might be sooner, rather than later, if Alpha continues his unfortunate new habit of doing exactly as he pleases without consulting anyone,” Leonard points out. 

“Don’t have to tell me twice.” Allison collapses into a chair. “The agents are riled up too. Worse than that, they’re  _cocky._  It’s a dangerous combination.”

“So what do you propose? Confine them all to the ship like recalcitrant children?”

A thought occurs. “Not the ship, necessarily.”

Her husband sits straight up and eyes her warily. “Allison, what are you planning?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll let you know if it pans out as viable.” She waves herself out of the office without answering any more of his questions. 

As soon as she makes it back to her office, she digs out Florida’s report on the Blood Gulch outposts from a pile of recent submissions.

High level of largely-harmless mayhem, isolated location, relatively unknown aspect of the program and none of it funded by Charon Industries…this could work. 

Not to mention that trying to work with the insanity Florida hid between the lines of meticulously crafted incident reports would be a good exercise in creative thinking for all of the agents.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said the end of May. It's like, ten minutes before midnight on the 31st. Goal ACHIEVED. 
> 
> And wow, this has always been meant to be an au, but MAN have I gotten jossed by the new season.


	6. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two months later, Allison checks in on the results of a training exercise.

_Two months later_

 

“General, the Director would like to know when Alpha squad is scheduled to return.”

Allison is so busy frowning at the report in front of her that it takes her a moment to frown at FILSS’s message. “I thought he was tracking that.”

“I believe his exact wording regarding the matter was ‘if you want to disrupt the training schedule by sending the entire Alpha squad out on a fool’s errand, you can keep track of what they’re doing.’” The words are read out in FILSS’s even tones, which means it was a written message, not a verbal one. Which means it probably got lost in the hundreds of other memos Allison deals with.

“When was their last check-in?”

“Two days ago, General.”

“Did they make any mention at all of coming back?”

“I believe that their orders are to stay until you inform them they can return.”

“Whoops.” She and Leonard are in the middle of going toe-to-toe with the oversight committee and Chairman Hargrove for the right to another AI, which means round after round of reports on her part detailing the successes and failures of the program over its four years and round after round of arguing with Leonard over the way he insists the AI should be based off of her. Not to mention that she’s also been supervising preliminary recruitment for Beta squad, as well as dodging the accountants trying to track her down for the annual overhaul. She’s been only too glad of the quiet.

“Get VIC to contact Blue base for me, and run the transmission through here so I can hear it.”

The call dials up, popping up on the screen on the wall. It’s answered by a private in regulation Blue armor, and she scrambles to remember his name.

“Hello? Who is this?” His voice triggers her memory—Private Caboose, Michael J., 479er’s brother—transferred out of his squad after an accident with an ancient AI resulted in severe mental trauma. “I am Caboose. Is this the pizza place?”

“Yo, Caboose!”

VIC annoys the crap out of her, but he’s effective at blocking and doing runarounds of anyone who wants to contact ‘command.’ Can’t make it too easy for the agents to yell at her. If they’d been able to reach her directly the first week, she’d probably have spent a lot more time having to deal with their complaints. Instead, she got to read the frantic and frustrated reports from the removed safety of her office and laugh.

“Oh! It is the voice of the phone! Hello!”

“Hey there, amigo! So, those Freelancers still hanging around?”

“Yes. Except for the one who makes dumb jokes. We sent him to the Red Team, but they did not want him either.”

“Great, great! So I just need you to pass on the message that they can come back now.”

“Come back…there.”

“Yup. They’re done with their assignment, so we need ‘em to come back to Command now. Other places need help too.”

“You mean they will leave?”

“Yup. Leave Blood Gulch.”

“Oh. Sorry. I can’t do that.”

“What? Why not?”

“Tucker said we are keeping them. And I do not want them to go. The purple one and the one that looks like me are both very nice, and Tucker is always shouting at Agent Washingtub now and not me. And the one who looks like Tucker is scary, but not bad-scary. So we are keeping them.”

“No, no, you can’t _keep_ them—”

“Goodbye.” The screen goes black.

Allison reminds herself very firmly that she is a professional, and that an entire squad of highly trained soldiers accidentally defecting is supposed to be very, very, bad, and not hilarious.

“FILSS, please pull up the surveillance footage of the valley floor.”

She isn’t sure what she expected, but seeing the group of elite soldiers she’s spent the past three years turning into the most efficient unit in the UNSC military decked out in brand-new paint accents, split up into two teams, and playing out a chaotic scene is definitely not it.

Agent Washington and another soldier in aqua armor are arguing behind a rock while North calmly takes potshots at the canyon wall. He seems to be cheerfully shouting insults at the Warthog careening across the canyon floor with Private Grif at the wheel and a mounted machine gun manned by South and a maroon soldier. Florida is inside a _tank—_ Allison isn’t really sure where he got it, and doesn’t really want to know—chasing after them. Maine is on the roof of red base with a brown soldier she’s about 70% sure she didn’t assign there, both of them looking down at where Geor— _Sarge_ is waving a shotgun in the air and calling out encouragement and insults in equal measure. Connecticut is simultaneously perched on Maine’s shoulders and sneaking up on the same outcropping North is aiming for. Even as she watches, Carolina physically launches herself at a red-accented blue-flag-carrying York and tackles him to the ground, yelling something about the “superiority of the Blues.”

Allison slowly and carefully puts down her tablet out of harm’s way, crosses her arms on the desk, lowers her head onto them, and breaks down laughing until her eyes water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The End. 
> 
> But not really.
> 
> I'm sorry it took so long! This chapter has been written for a loooong time. Like, before chapter 2 was even done. But then I was worried that I wasn't showcasing the Freelancers in Blood Gulch enough, and then I stressed over how to write that, and then, and then, and THEN I remembered that a sequel is coming where they will get way more screentime anyways and I'm more excited for that than I am to incorporate something I was never prepared to deal with and here we are. 
> 
> Oh yeah, if you noticed that I made this part of a series a while back you probably already knew, but A SEQUEL IS COMING. The first part is already written and I will start posting it next week. I'm participating in the Bang with a different fic, so progress may be slow, but IT WILL HAPPEN.  
> The sequel, probably to be called Universe Collision, is a crossover with canon that follows Season 13. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who read and liked and followed this story! I truly appreciate it and I hope to see you again when the sequel goes up.

**Author's Note:**

> Posting what I have all together. Expect an update with the rest of the Blood Gulch crew eventually. 
> 
> Originally I meant to maintain a certain level of canon plausibility. That went flying out the window about halfway through chapter 2.
> 
> Come find me on [ Tumblr](http://sroloc--elbisivni.tumblr.com) and talk to me about this verse or RvB in general!


End file.
